Willy-Nilly
2025
Carnation Contemporary
Portland, Oregon
2025
Carnation Contemporary
Portland, Oregon
Estonia
was one of the last European countries to be forcefully converted from paganism
to Christianity. Today Estonia is one of the least religious countries in
Europe. Only a small percentage of Estonians believe in God, but most of them
believe they can talk to trees. This body of work has something to do with that.
This project begins with a slow turn back to my Estonian roots to embrace pre-Christian magical thinking, animism, awe and wonder. I employ an advanced print technique I call, Willy-Nilly, that prioritizes intuition, failure and chance over logic. Layering and repetition are used to create hypnotic rhythms that look back to ancient spiritual technologies that disrupt logical thinking, like spinning in a circle or singing. The layering of multiple photographs onto one picture plane challenges the western obsession with the individual — especially as it’s enforced by the single authoritative lens of the camera. These kinds of images obstruct legibility but also surface new forms of reading. The resulting pictorial anomalies and abstractions confuse our relationship to nature as it’s mediated through images. I think of this as an alternative tool for understanding, revealing the hidden by challenging what we think and expect landscaped pictures should look like.
This project begins with a slow turn back to my Estonian roots to embrace pre-Christian magical thinking, animism, awe and wonder. I employ an advanced print technique I call, Willy-Nilly, that prioritizes intuition, failure and chance over logic. Layering and repetition are used to create hypnotic rhythms that look back to ancient spiritual technologies that disrupt logical thinking, like spinning in a circle or singing. The layering of multiple photographs onto one picture plane challenges the western obsession with the individual — especially as it’s enforced by the single authoritative lens of the camera. These kinds of images obstruct legibility but also surface new forms of reading. The resulting pictorial anomalies and abstractions confuse our relationship to nature as it’s mediated through images. I think of this as an alternative tool for understanding, revealing the hidden by challenging what we think and expect landscaped pictures should look like.
